Whether you sell on a marketplace such as eBay or Amazon or on your own website, you spend a lot of time dealing with shipping labels and communicating to buyers that their item is on the way. This week, Canadian sellers are getting new functionality for dealing with Canada Post shipments, the same features that have been making the lives of U.S. sellers easier when dealing with their USPS shipments.

Read more: eBay and Amazon Sellers Can Now Automate Canada Post Shipments.

July 7 – Royal Mail have revealed they will be celebrating the Paralympics by issuing a set of six first class stamps in a specially designed miniature sheet following the conclusion of the Games that will feature every single ParalympicsGB gold medal winner from London 2012.

This will be the first time ever that a set of stamps have been issued to celebrate Paralympic gold medallists from the host country.

Each set of stamps will feature a different group of individual Paralympic gold medal winners and will cost £3.60 ($5.60/€4.50).

They will be on sale from September 27 in more than 5,200 post offices across the country.

Read more: Royal Mail to issue stamps featuring London 2012 ParalympicsGB gold medal winners | London 2012 Paralympic news | insideworldparasport.biz.

Australia Post has launched a new application to allow customers to send postcards anywhere in the world using a photo taken on a mobile phone.

The new iPhone app is free to download, and sees Australia Post converting photos and a personalised message into high-quality physical postcards.

Payment is by MasterCard, Visa or Paypal, with domestic delivery for $1.99 or international delivery anywhere in the world for $2.99.

Catriona Larritt, Australia Post’s general manager for post digital, said the new app was part of an ongoing effort at the postal operator to make its products and services “a helpful part of our customers’ lives”, both physically and digitally.

Read more: Australia Post launches postcard app for iPhone | Post & Parcel.

I have a notice on my front door that says “No junk mail”. And yet still it comes. The other morning I was so incensed with the pizza offers that I grabbed the offending pages, rushed out into the street and thrust them back into the hands of the delivery lad. He looked surprised: “Oh, I didn’t know that was what ‘junk mail’ meant!”

Read more: Junk mail and clothes shopping – the Royal Mail’s nice little earners – Telegraph.

HARLOW, UNITED KINGDOM–(Marketwire – July 5, 2012) - Pitney Bowes warns that SMEs who are persisting with stamps, may have missed out on significant savings already. It’s now been two months since the Royal Mail raised the price of first class stamps to 60p for a standard letter; franked mail is 27% cheaper at 44p per item.

SMEs that are sending as few as 10 first class letters per day could have already saved up to £72 on their postal costs by using a franking machine instead*.

Phil Hutchison, Pitney Bowes’ Marketing Director, advises “Over the course of a year, the additional costs of using stamps are well over £400, even for mail-light users. What is not calculated is the loss of staff time as well as other business benefits that users of franking machines enjoy.”

Pitney Bowes has published comprehensive advice about the rate change online at www.ratechange.co.uk as well as offering specific product options suitable for small and micro businesses.

For further advice on how to help your business make and maintain savings on postal communication, then please visit: www.pitneybowes.co.uk.

The Royal Mail move to ask people if they mind having parcels delivered to their neighbours is the latest effort to solve a thorny issue. How can people conveniently get parcels delivered when most are at work all day?

It’s an experience almost all of us seem to share.

The swift, efficient world of online ordering meets the messy realities of the analogue world we actually live in. And it all seems to grind to a halt.

“We were expecting a gift to arrive, and the courier firm told us it had been delivered. We told them we hadn’t received anything, and the company said it had been delivered to a hedge. We haven’t got a hedge.”

More: BBC News – The parcel conundrum.

A man dressed as a security guard made off with a post office’s takings when he tricked the postmaster into handing them over.

South Wales Police is appealing for information following the theft of cash from the post office on Trebanog Road in Porth.

Pretending to be a security guard, the man walked into the premises at 12:55pm on Wednesday saying he was there to collect takings.

More: Man disguised as security guard steals post office takings – Wales News – News – WalesOnline.

HOUSTON — Imagine crooks stealing your identity with the help of the government. It may sound incredible, but the KHOU 11 News I-Team has uncovered a hole in the federal system that the U.S. Postal Service has known about for years, but done nothing to fix.It’s a breakdown that is devastating consumers.

Read more: You never moved, but your mail did: Is the Post Office protecting customers from fraud? | khou.com Houston.